Soren stayed quiet for a long moment, watching the candle flame flicker in the draft from the balcony. He was trying to find a place to start that wouldn't bring the smell of the pit into the room.
"I found the mages," he said, his voice dropping low. "What was left of them."
Eris went perfectly still against his ribs, her fingers stopping in his hair.
"Thirty of them," he went on. "In a hidden pit below the dungeon floor, right beneath the place where the chains were anchored. They were killed down there and left in the dark."
"My father," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
Her face didn't break into tears. Her eyes just went flat and dark, the cold look she used when she was remembering the red halls of her childhood.
She had known what King Aureth was long before she ever met Soren, and the news of another grave didn't surprise her, even if it sat heavy on her shoulders.
